


here's where my body lies; it lied as well in life

by Princex_N



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Family Feels, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, POV Alternating, Self-Hatred, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 02:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Steve couldn’t tell you why he thought it was a good idea.If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He’d known from the moment it occurred to him that it was a decidedly bad idea, and he’s not entirely sure why he’s doing it anyway.But the hours creep by, and Steve doesn’t turn his car around.Or, Steve dies instead of Nell.





	here's where my body lies; it lied as well in life

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from [this A Softer World comic](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1233)

She is holed up in a local motel, because for the first time in a while, the prospect of being alone in her apartment (in  _their_ apartment) is terrifying. 

Her hands tremble as she dials Steve's number, and the shaking doesn't alleviate when the line cuts dead. 

If he's declining her call, then maybe he's okay, but it does mean that he's still mad. She'd known as soon as Steve had left that going to his book signing like that was a bad idea. Nell doesn't necessarily regret bringing up what she did, but Steve has always listened to what people had to say, to what  _she_ had to say, and it probably wasn't fair to do it in front of everyone like that. 

She'd thought it would be the only way to make him listen to her, but she'd only needed to think about it for more than a few minutes to realize that he would have listened to her anyway.

Calling Shirley is next, but Nell isn't surprised when she doesn't answer either. Shirl answers the phone a lot of the time, but most of the time during the day she's busy at work. Nell should be at work. She leaves a message instead. 

"It's Nell," she says, like they don't already know. "I need you to call me. It's hard to understand, everything's so... twisted, and it's hard to explain, but..." She knows that she's not making much sense, but she can't help it. Nothing about any of this makes sense. "I'm worried about Steve. Have you talked to him? Call me." 

There has to be something else she can do, but Nell has never been good at coming up with plans. 

Not good ones, anyway. 

* * *

Steve couldn't tell you why he thought it was a good idea. 

If he's being well and truly honest with himself, he  _doesn't_ think it's a good idea. He'd known from the moment it had occurred to him that it was a decidedly  _bad_ idea, and he's not entirely sure why he's doing it anyway. 

But the hours creep by, and Steve doesn't turn his car around. 

* * *

Stealing from Steve probably shouldn't be as easy as it is. 

This is probably definitely one of the reasons Luke struggles so much with the fourth step. 

But it's easy. Routine. And knowing that Steve won't really  _get mad_ only makes it easier. Well, that's not true. Steve will get mad, almost undoubtedly, but he won't get mad in front of Luke. In front of Luke, he'll only be  _disappointed_ , hidden well behind concern, which is almost harder to deal with. 

Knowing that Steve would offer him an endless number of chances should probably make it a little easier, actually. 

This time, though, when Luke tells himself that he's going to make it up to Steve, he means it. 

He gets almost $150 for the camera and the I-Pad together, which probably isn't as much as they're worth, but it's enough for what he needs tonight. 

He just needs a hotel room. 

Other people have been helping Luke for years. He can stand to help someone else every once in a while. 

Later, he'll remember why he doesn't try often. He wonders if this is the same feeling his family gets in their chests whenever Luke fucks up. He thinks he finally understands why they hate it so much. 

The rehab center won't let him back in, Joey took all the money, and Luke doesn't have anywhere else to go. He could stay on the streets, but he knows that his threshold for avoiding temptation isn't limitless, and with the feeling souring his stomach, he knows it'll only be a matter of time. 

And this time, Luke is serious about quitting. 

He goes back to Steve's place, rigs the door shut behind him as best as he can, and resolves to wait. 

Luke has no fucking idea what he's doing, but there's not a doubt in his mind that once Steve comes home, he won't have to figure it all out for himself. 

* * *

Steve really should have known better. 

Really, he of all people  _should_ know better, but the lights are all on and  _porch light means come home_ , and maybe right now, Steve doesn't want to think too hard about it. 

He is home. 

Shouldn't that be enough? 

He pulls the keys from the ignition, but keeps them tucked into the palm of his hand. He can't think of why, maybe just so that he has a quick exit once he comes to his sense, but they feel important. He doesn't question it. 

They meet him inside, and Steve much really be crazy if he's coming up with  _this_. Especially when Shirl is pissed at him, and Nell is pissed at him, and Theo is probably mostly indifferent to him, and Luke is whatever he is these days. If this was real, then they wouldn't be looking at him with facial expressions that say they're happy to see him, they wouldn't be so thankful and understanding. 

But even if it's not real, who's to say he can't enjoy it anyway? 

Something unpleasant tries to catch his attention when they invite him upstairs with them, but it's easy to push aside. Easy to focus on the quiet hum of their relaxed conversation instead of the quiet voice in the back of his head telling him that something is  _wrong_. 

"You can't help them," his mother says, stopping him from going deeper into the room to join them. He pulls his eyes away from the laughing cluster of his siblings to look at her. "Not the way you're trying to." 

If he were thinking clearly, he might notice the uncharacteristic edge to her voice and look in her eyes, but he isn't, and doesn't. It's his mother, and if he's here then why  _wouldn't_ she be? "How can I?" he asks, curious, desperate. He's always tried so hard to be someone they could depend on - financially, physically, emotionally - but despite his best efforts he's never seemed to be able to do a good job. His eyes are imploring as he turns to face her completely. 

She smiles at his attention on her. "We're going to bring them home, soon," she says, instead of answering his question. "Won't that be wonderful?" 

Steve has a flash of clarity, of the house as it  _is_ \- molding walls and foundations that ooze anger and hatred like a bleeding wound. The thought of his family here makes his chest tighten uncomfortably. "No," he says, voice hesitant in his defiance of an idea that seems to make her so happy. 

But she doesn't seem upset, only hums thoughtfully. _"I_ want to bring them home," she tells him. "I'm tired of being alone." 

And Steve... Steve can understand that. 

"But if you stayed with me," she continues, seeming to warm up to the idea as she steps forward and grabs his hand. The hand with his keys still clenched tight in his grip, important for the reason he couldn't name. "Then I wouldn't have to be alone." 

He hesitates, slightly, because something seems wrong. His mother continues to smile at him, like she doesn't notice. "They wouldn't miss you," she says soothingly, "and you could finally protect them." 

The words are not something he'd expected to hear from his mother, but they are not new to him as a concept. He knows that - whether through his own words or actions or sheer inability to Do Things Right - his family is distant. They still come to him when they need help - when Luke re-emerges to retry rehab, when Nellie has a low episode, when Shirley or Theo have an argument that they can't or won't work out for themselves, when Dad needs something done but is too far away to do it - but they don't tend to linger once the transaction (his task?) is done. Is that his fault, or theirs? 

Does it matter?

"I..." he drifts off again, but Leigh isn't talking to him and Shirley and Nell and Theo are all so angry, and Luke is finally recovering, and Nell is finding her feet again and Theo has her psychiatric practice and Shirley has her business and her family, and really, what does  _he_ have? "Okay," he says finally, looking back up to meet her eyes. "Okay." 

She smiles. Wide. Proud. Cutting. "What a perfect big brother," she says, pulling him into a hug, and he goes willingly. Jerks in surprise, but doesn't pull away, at the sudden sharp pain in his wrist, at the feel of something ripping, just below his line of sight. 

* * *

Theo wakes up with a strangled gasp and a choked cry of pain as she becomes aware of an intense pain in her arms. She drags them close to her chest, breathing harshly, and thinks, inexplicably, of Steve. 

Her arm reaches out for her phone before she stops herself. She hasn't called him after a night terror since she was almost twenty. He had stayed up with her all night, voice tinged with exhaustion and echoing strangely around the tiles of his bathroom because there wasn't any other space in his small apartment to talk without waking up Leigh. 

She leaves her phone on the nightstand and rolls over. 

She doesn't need him anymore. 

* * *

"Stevie's in the Red Room," Shirl says, and forgets what she'd said as soon as the words are out of her mouth. 

It's one in the morning. She stretches her wrists out, wincing at the strange ripple of pain that tears through them, and then lays back down. 

She's asleep again almost as soon as her head hits the pillow. 

* * *

Luke jerks away, nearly toppling out of the dining room chair he'd fallen asleep in. 

He rubs his wrists tiredly, wondering if maybe he'd hit them on the table when he'd jolted awake. He doesn't know what time it is, but doubts it matters. 

Why the hell couldn't Steve just have a couch? 

* * *

Nell had tried to sleep but hadn't been able to. 

She can't tell if it's the unfamiliar environment or just a side effect of the anxiety still swirling around in her chest. 

It's just barely past four in the morning when there are tears streaming down her face and a sudden pain in her wrists. 

She can't tell which came first. 

* * *

He wakes up to pain. 

"You're awake, honey," his mom croons, the ghost of her fingers brushing over the curve of his spine. She sounds so happy, and he wants to be relieved with her, but all he can think about is the deep-set  _ache_ in his wrists and his chest. 

He glances down, and the wounds are filled with mold and dried blood. 

He can almost remember what happened but can't tell if he made the cuts himself or if his mother did it for him when he wasn't paying attention. 

Thinks about the way he hadn't tried to staunch the blood, even a little, and wonders if it matters. 

* * *

Shirley wakes up to ten missed calls from Nell and scrolls past all of them to get to Steve's number. 

(It's pure practicality, she tells herself, since Steve is the one that lives closer.) 

He doesn't pick up, which is typical. 

If he's going to be bitter about what she'd said to him the other day, then she's more than earned the freedom to do the same. 

* * *

A little later, when he's a bit more  _together_ , he realizes that he's not in the same room he was in the night before. He's in  _his_ room, the one he had stayed in all those years ago. 

It's as much comforting as it is unsettling, and he can't tell if that's good or bad. 

(If he's being honest, does it even matter anymore?)

His mom isn't around anymore, and he wanders a bit, unsure if he's trying to find her or trying to find a way out. 

(Some part of him knows, instinctively, that there is no exit for him. Not anymore.) 

One way or another, he finds himself back in the Red Room. 

It's as strange as it is familiar, and he understands why as much as he doesn't. 

He crouches next to the stiff figure left curled small on the floor and examines the twin sets of wounds and flaking blood with a surprising level of detachment. 

This was him.

This was his body. 

It doesn't feel as familiar as it used to. 

* * *

"Has Nell been calling you?" Shirley asks, and Theo almost laughs. 

"We haven't spoken since LA," she says, and can't find herself surprised at the chastising noise Shirl makes. "I'm waiting for an apology, and since Nell  _hasn't_ been calling me, then I'm assuming that she's not ready to give one to me yet." 

Her sister might call it unfair, but Theo doesn't. At least  _Theo_ has a reason to be avoiding the phone calls, instead of whatever convenient excuse Shirl has been making to justify doing the same. 

"She keeps saying she's worried about Steve," Shirley says, instead of chasing down the argument that would have readily unfolded for her, and that alone is enough to make Theo hesitate. 

She thinks of waking up at one in the morning with aching wrists and dismisses the thought a second time. 

"Steve's fine," she says instead. "Steve's always fine. He's probably just finally getting around to setting some boundaries. Maybe you should try doing the same thing."

* * *

Losing track of time is surprisingly easy, especially when he is almost positive that he isn't  _there_ for many of the hours that are definitely passing. He doesn't know if it's been days or hours or weeks before he runs into the little girl in the hallway. 

She's both a complete stranger and intrinsically familiar. Recognized not through firsthand experience, but through a child's caricatures and quietly whispered stories. 

"You must be Abigail," he says, trying for a smile, and is not surprised when she nods. 

She doesn't speak. He doesn't know if she can't or if she chooses not to, but despite her lack of words or facial expressions, she manages to get her thoughts across incredibly clearly. 

"Luke is okay, I think. Was the last I heard from him," he tells her. (Ninety days sober, and Steve wishes that he'd had the foresight to leave a message letting him know how  _proud_ he was, but Steve has always been lacking as an older brother. A better one would have realized, would have  _seen_ , and put the pieces together before it was too late. This is Abigail, and she was real, and no wonder Luke had screaming nightmares about her for years after they'd left this house. Steve should have known better.) 

His mother hovers closer at the sound of Luke's name, and Abigail shrinks away from her minutely. 

"Don't worry," he tells her, once his mother has wandered off again. "I'm going to keep her busy. She won't bother you." 

Her face changes, just a little, and Steve doesn't get a chance to tell if she's relieved or just more scared before she's gone. 

* * *

Shirley doesn't answer her phone, and Steve doesn't answer his phone. It's been almost two days and there are only so many people that Nell can think to call. 

"Dad?" she says, as soon as the line connects. Suddenly irrationally worried that something will happen, she rushes to explain as quickly as she can, "Something's wrong. I think something's wrong withe Steve but no one will answer and I can't get him on the phone and I think he's still mad about what I did last month but I'm really worried." 

There is a second of silence, and Nell almost panics in the short amount of time it takes her father to piece together what she'd said into something that makes sense. 

"Okay," he says, slowly. "Have you tried his house?" 

She thinks to ask why he would assume she could just  _go_ to Steve's house when she'd ruined things so spectacularly, but realizes just as quickly that her dad doesn't know because Steve hadn't told. Steve wouldn't have told anyone, and the fact that she can't tell if that's because he'd wanted to protect her or because no one else would care to listen to him leaves her mindlessly terrified. 

"Okay, alright," her dad says, responding to some noise she had made without realizing. "Alright, I'll be there as soon as I can. You go to Steve's house, and if he gets mad, then you can just blame it on me, okay? That way he can't be mad at you. I'll be there as soon as I can. You go to Steve's. Okay?"

She nods, and then remembers to say "Okay," because that is something she can work with. 

That is something she can do. 

* * *

Time passes, but not as much as the first time. Steve is back in the Red Room, surveying himself and trying to  _think_ and  _remember_. It feels strangely important, but he can't think of why. 

He is not quite decayed, but he doesn't think it will be long now. 

The door opens, and by now, Steve is used to the doors opening and closing as people wander in and out of rooms that used to be theirs. He doesn't think much about it until he hears the little wounded noise someone makes in the doorway. 

He looks up, and Abigail is there. 

She is not alone. 

Steve's panic-wide eyes meet Clara Dudley's grief-stricken ones for half a second before he flees to hide. 

There's some kind of emotion swirling in his chest, but he doesn't know what it is. 

* * *

Luke's been in Steve's apartment for almost three full days before someone knocks on the door. 

It doesn't make sense that it's Steve, but Luke's attempts to keep the door from opening for just anyone might be making it hard for him to get in. The key won't matter anymore, so maybe that's why. 

But when he opens the door, he comes face to face with Nell, instead. 

They both stare at each other, shocked. Luke hasn't seen her since he'd gotten her to go out on the street for him, and she had only been out of the car for ten seconds before Luke had realized what a stupid idea it was, but he hadn't been able to make himself stop her. 

Hadn't been able to stop himself from taking it anyway. 

"Where's Steve?" Nell asks, instead of anything else. Luke hasn't seen her in months, but the shaking anxiety that coats her voice is not something he could ever miss. 

"What's wrong?" he returns, belatedly remembering to step out of the way to let her into the apartment. "I haven't seen him. I've been... waiting." 

It sounds stupid when he puts it like that, but Nell doesn't tell him so. She meets his eyes, and they are so scared that Luke finds himself getting nervous too, even though he doesn't understand why. 

* * *

His mom finds him later, curled up by the backboard of his old bed, and she wraps herself around him and he is grateful for it. 

(She smells like mildew and decay, but it's alright; Steve doesn't need to breathe, not anymore.) 

"It's okay," she tells him. "You don't need to worry about it. It was all just a bad dream." 

He hasn't seen his mom in nearly thirty years, but even he knows that this is not quite her. Can tell that there is something  _off_ about her, something  _not her_ hidden behind the folds of her dress. Maybe his dad had a point, that night, when he'd told them all that the woman in the house wasn't their mother. 

He buries his face in her shoulder and can't find it in him to care at all. 

* * *

It's late in the evening when Shirley starts getting calls from her dad and isn't that just  _perfect._

Her dad doesn't call her for much of anything anymore. She's not prone to antagonizing him like Steve is, but that doesn't mean that their relationship hasn't taken a downward spiral over the past handful of years. He mostly only calls for birthdays and holidays, and she does the same. 

The fact that he's calling her when there are neither anywhere close means that Nell has started calling him about how Shirley isn't taking her phone calls. The only thing he's going to tell her is to stop being mean to her sister and help her out every once in a while. 

Shirley can take a fucking hint. She doesn't need her dad to tell her to play nice, anymore. 

She doesn't take his call, but the next time Nell calls, she'll answer. 

* * *

There are people in the house, overlooked by the steady quiet presence of the Dudley's, and Steve makes sure to keep himself hidden from all of them. 

(He knows what they're here for, but doesn't want to think about it.) 

Barely an hour earlier, he'd felt grief like a wave crash over him. 

It goes without saying that it hadn't belonged to him. 

(He'd noticed, when he'd woken up, that he could feel them. As if they were mere inches away, like all he had to do was  _turn_ and they would be there. He looks, every so often, to check and see if they're okay. Luke, torn somewhere between guilt and grief over a mistake, but sober; Nell flutters with anxious energy, but holds steady; Theo is muffled behind bricks of desperate self-preservation, but is okay; Shirl seems more and more irritated with every passing moment, but is doing well despite it.)

(He almost wishes they hadn't found him, so that he wouldn't have to feel every one of them as they go dark with grief.) 

He can tell how easy it would be to follow them, to trace the lines back to their owners and try to  _fix_ things as best as he can.

But he knows that if he went, his mother would follow, and not even the part of him that denies that there's anything wrong believes that this is a good thing. 

As the grief starts to spread, he goes to find her. 

She's a lot easier to distract than she used to be. 

* * *

It's been a full day since Shirley first brought it up, when Nell finally calls her. 

Theo isn't really expecting the phone call and isn't sure if she  _really_ wants to pick up. After all, if Nell is having some kind of breakdown again, then she probably won't be calling to apologize.

But if she's going to get let down, she might as well let it be now, when she'll still have time later to find a distraction from the disappointment. 

"Hello?" she says, voice just this side of bland.

"Th-Theo?" Nell asks, and her voice shakes so severely that Theo finds herself concerned despite her words about boundaries. 

"What's wrong?" 

There are quiet voices in the background of the phone call, words that Theo can't quite make out as Nellie sniffs miserably. "It's Steve," she says. Theo doesn't get a chance to get angry about being proven right before Nell finishes with, "He's dead." 

Theo is well-versed in feeling things, despite the fact that everyone likes to act like she isn't. Her constant battle to keep emotions off of her face has nothing to do with the number of things that she feels under the surface. 

What's surprising is that her reaction to this news is, at first, to feel nothing. 

"What?" she asks, voice as empty as the space in her chest. 

"He's dead." Nell sounds like she's trying to steel herself against the news but can't quite manage it. "He, they found him a couple of hours ago." A sob. "Theo it's been  _days_." 

She should be protesting, she should be angry, or sad, or anything at all, but she isn't. 

"How?" 

She doesn't know if she wants to know the answer. 

Nell stays on the phone long enough to tell her that she's with Luke and Dad at Steve's apartment (which catches Theo's attention, because since when did Steve live in an  _apartment_ again, but there aren't words to ask) and to ask if she can tell Shirl or at least get Shirl to finally answer Dad's phone calls, before she hangs up. 

So, Theo goes to tell Shirl. 

"What the fuck, Theo," Shirley spits, and Theo thinks that she would be angry, but she's still caught in that fog of  _shock_. "You're full of shit." 

"Nell said you're not answering Dad's calls," she says, instead of anything else. 

Shirl goes pale, and Theo wonders how long he'd been trying her phone. "How?" she asks, and Theo doesn't have the foresight to be gentle or cautious when she answers. 

"He killed himself." 

If Shirley had been angry about the initial statement, then she's flat out pissed now. "Fuck off. Steve wouldn't... he couldn't have..." she doesn't get a chance to finish her thought before she bursts into tears. 

And finally, finally, the sight of her big sister breaking down is enough to make Theo feel it all too. 

* * *

They're not the only ones in the house. Dozens and dozens of people roam the halls, and Steve is surprised to note that he recognizes a decent few of them. 

(All that time calling his family crazy, and he winds up a ghost himself, only to find that he's seen ghosts all along. Hypocrite isn't a strong enough word for what he is.) 

He gives most of them a wide berth and they give him the same. A few chase him through the halls, twisted pleasure coating the walls as he pants needlessly through his terror. Others take his presence with a lot more grace and kindness. 

Abigail, who still doesn't talk but who walks the halls with him and stares at him with her wide, placid eyes. The man on the stairwell, who gives Steve small smiles when he sits on a step to watch the man work on the clock. 

(There's something different about  _him_ , those times. It happens more and more, like he's too small, or not quite the same way he was when he'd walked through those front doors the second time, not quite right. He thinks he's too young, but sometimes can't remember if that's right, because how old  _had_ he been, when he'd come back? Time is meaningless when you're dead, but it feels worse than that. Messier.) 

He never sees Nellie's Bent Neck Lady, and the thought fills him with the worst kind of dread every time it occurs to him. 

* * *

She makes them transport Steve's body as quickly as possible, despite their insistence that the state of the body means that it's a job better finished in one go. 

The others all think it's a bad idea too, but Shirley couldn't care less. 

It's her job to fix people, and she is going to take care of this. 

He shows up already cleaned, with most of the preservation process done, and Shirley is glad that she had insisted, because this cannot possibly be their best work. She'd known that the body was in bad shape, but that's no excuse. 

Still, she can't quite make herself start working immediately. 

Too much time is wasted just  _looking_ , and Shirley knows that she should stop and get to work, but she can't quite make herself do it yet. He doesn't look peaceful, he looks  _sad_ , and Shirley can't tell if that's her own imagination superimposing the emotion onto him or if it's the truth of the corpse lying in front of her. 

 _Three days_. 

No one had noticed at all. 

The wounds on his wrists are tucked against his stomach, and she allows herself the conflict of not looking before she makes herself. 

They look bad. They are messy and deep and decayed.

The report said he'd used his keys. 

She thinks for a moment, that they don't look right. Like the angle is just slightly off, just shy of not being the right trajectory. She dismisses the thought - she's a mortician, not a coroner - but thinks about getting a closer look, anyway. She blinks, and the wounds are filled with mold and teeming with insects. 

She blinks, and they are gone. 

She resolves to hide them with the suit sleeves and tries not to think about it too hard. 

* * *

He can tell when they've all met up for the service by the riptide of conflicting emotions that starts to chip away at all of them. 

It's the first time all of them have been together in  _years_. Through weddings and hospital scares and school years, there was always one or two missing. It's his funeral, of all things, that's finally brought them all back together. A part of him wants to go, to make it  _all_ of them, but he knows better than to think it would be a good idea. 

(Even if he hadn't  _known_ , he'd seen what ghosts had done to his family. Had taken a front row seat to the years of trauma. He doubts his presence would serve to make any of that easier, and the last thing Steve has ever wanted is to be a further burden on his family.) 

Shirl gets angry because it's easier than being guilty, and Luke and Nell are curled tight with tension as Theo rises to the bait to argue with her. 

Steve has never been good at fixing anything, and knows he probably couldn't help, but that doesn't mean he can't wish, sitting alone on the staircase near the front door. 

If only things could be as easy as walking back through them. 

* * *

Nell is so full of conflicting emotions, and she doesn't know what to do with any of them. 

She could almost want to be relieved, to see the rest of them all whole and together. To see and know that Luke is sober, and Shirley is okay, and Theo is doing well; it could almost be relief. 

But any relief that wanted to rise gets strangled into something curled and cold at the sight of the casket at the back of the room. At the knowledge of what lies inside of it. 

It's mean and selfish, but she doesn't want to see the consequences of her actions. 

She makes herself go, because Luke can't make himself go alone and Nell is going to have to look eventually. 

He doesn't look any different, he doesn't look at all the same. 

It takes everything in her not to recoil at the sight and flee. 

* * *

He wonders what they see when they look at him. 

He'd spent hours hunched over his own body because it was better than roaming these unsettling halls alone, but when he tries to think of how it had looked and what they would see, the image is stunningly lacking. 

Had Shirley been the one to take care of it all? He hopes she wasn't. There aren't any secrets his body has left to hide, but Shirl at her worst couldn't earn having to see him like that. 

Steve hopes that someone else had taken care of it, and hopes that they had done a good job, so that his little siblings don't have to see the same mold and rot he does when he looks down at himself. 

He thinks to the way they feel, small pings of noise and feedback, and thinks that nothing could be that easy. 

* * *

The temptation to touch is nearly overpowering. 

Theo doesn't know what she could possibly gain from it, doesn't know what she might figure out, and doesn't know if it would be worth it, but that doesn't stop her brain from trying to push it. 

It would be pretty easy. No one would notice. Dad is struggling to keep the small talk going, and Shirley is trying to calm down Nell, and Luke is trying to do the same without looking anywhere near their older sister. 

No one is paying attention to her. 

But as she tilts her head, just slightly, she can see the torn ragged edge of something just over the curve of his wrist. Barely visible, thanks to the position of his hands and the length of his sleeves, but Theo sees. 

Theo sees, and turns to get another drink. 

* * *

Mom gets away from him once, and once is all it takes. 

The time he'd spent roaming the halls to try and find her had been time wasted, and he finally gives into the broken desire and  _turns_ to find himself in a not-quite-unfamiliar building. He doesn't know if they could hear him if he spoke and has no desire to find out. He flickers through the halls, searching desperately to find her before she does something to ruin the relative peace he'd tried his best to buy them. 

(Hadn't that been the whole point? Isn't that why he'd found himself in the house to begin with, keys curled protectively in his hands? He wants to find her and ask,  _'Why can't I be enough for you?'_ but can't think of an answer she could give that wouldn't cut him down to his core.) 

(Steve has never been enough.) 

He finds her in the dirt outside, one hand a vice grip around Luke's wrist, and Steve moves without thinking to pull his brother out of her reach. Mom makes a noise not unlike a sob, as Steve's arms wrap around Luke's chest, and he tries to move as quickly as he can, to leave before someone sees him and notices and everything goes to shit. 

The last thing he sees before they're gone again are Nellie's wide eyes, locked desperately with his. 

He should have known better. 

* * *

"Did you see?" Luke's voice is hoarse and desperate, as he turns to find Nell, Nell who had pulled him away from their brother's grave and their mother's tight grasp.

But Nell is standing too far away, her eyes locked somewhere over his shoulder. 

"Nellie?" he asks, desperate to know. He knows what Steve would say, can almost hear it in his head even though it's been years since the conversation has been had in front of him, but he needs to  _know_ , can't dismiss it like he knows his brother would want him to. 

"I saw Steve," Nell breathes, her eyes shift to meet his, wide and searching and Luke can't tell if it's hope or just desperation lit behind them. "He saved you from mom."

Emotion threatens to choke him, and he can't tell if it's the fact that Nell had seen their mom too or if it's the realization that the arms that had pulled Luke to safety had been his brothers (They were almost always his brother's) but doesn't think it matters. 

Nellie saw, Luke saw. 

Their eyes lock, and they know, instinctively, exactly what they're going to do about it. 

It's a twin thing.

* * *

Steve has not been here that long (he doesn't think), but he's been around long enough to know that his mother's sudden excitement means nothing good. 

She hovers in the windows, hands pressed against the glass as she stares down at the road leading up to the house with eager anticipation in her eyes. Steve's attempts at recapturing her attention go nowhere, and the dread in his stomach pulls at his lungs in a way that would be uncomfortable if he still needed to breathe. 

His mom pulls her hand from his to go look through a different window, as if the new angle will make whatever she's waiting for show up faster, and Steve catches sight of Abigail's wide eyes staring up at him from the stairwell. 

He wishes he could stop all this from happening. 

Knows already that it's too late. 

* * *

Theo is walking out with her dad, ready to go back home and just sleep and try not to think about anything else for the rest of the night, when dad suddenly stops. 

She's not touching him, but she can feel his panic like a physical force on her chest. 

"Did someone take the car?" he asks, and his voice is almost, but not quite, calm. 

Theo looks out into the parking lot, sees her jeep, but not Nell's car. 

She doesn't remember seeing the twins in a while. 

They exchange a glance and turn back towards the church. 

Theo has no idea what's going on, but the ideas she's coming up with don't inspire confidence. The way her dad moves, with a surety that's been absent for most of the past couple days, makes her think that it might somehow be worse than she's expecting. 

* * *

The house doesn't have him like it has his mom, but that doesn't make him any safer. 

He can feel it when Nell and Luke get close to the house, and he tries to make his way to the front porch to tell them to  _leave_ , to get the fuck out before it's too late, but something stops him. 

They walk in through the front door and Steve is there to meet them, too small and  _wrong_ and when they look at him with matching stricken expressions his mouth opens to greet them excitedly. He speaks without knowing what he's saying, and something in the back of his mind  _pushes_ him to go with it, to lean into it, to take their presence as the gift it could be, and he wants it just as badly as the force in his head does. 

But it's wrong. 

He doesn't get a chance to warn them before he flickers away and winds up somewhere else in the house, hidden away once it had realized it couldn't make him listen the way it wanted him to. 

Steve doesn't think he's ever been this scared in his entire life, but none of it matters. 

He has to make sure that they're safe. 

* * *

"Why the fuck would they go back to the house?" Shirley demands, in the passenger seat of the car because she couldn't just let Dad and Theo fuck off to wherever they were going  _without_ her, but that doesn't mean she understands any better. 

Dad doesn't seem eager to explain. 

"Suicides cluster in families," Theo offers from the backseat, and her smooth expression flickers when Shirley turns to glare at her, like she'd only just realized how it sounded. 

It might be true, but that doesn't mean Shirley wants to hear it laid out so plainly. 

(That's Shirl, through and through. Can't take the truth until she's dressed it up prettily enough to stomach. Pathetic.) 

"There's a lot you don't know," their father says, and isn't that the understatement of the fucking century. 

* * *

It takes him too long to find them. 

He passes Nellie in the dining room, sees the flicker of what it's trying to distract her with, and doesn't see Luke. 

Doesn't see their mother, or the other woman. 

It's distracting Nell like it had him, and Steven doesn't know how long she has until it decides to make it's move, but the cold feeling in the part of him that is  _Luke_ means that he doesn't have time to try and wake her up.

One at a time. 

Luke is on his back on the ground, and the flapper is standing over him, and Steve doesn't think before launching himself at her. She's smaller than him, thin and decayed, and he's viscerally reminded of being fourteen years old and getting into a fight with a kid half his age on the playground because the boy had made Nell cry and broken Luke's nose when he'd tried to defend her. 

It doesn't matter now, the way it hadn't mattered then. The only thing that matters is that someone is hurting his family, and he can make them stop. 

That's all he needs. 

She screams, in pain or rage he doesn't know, and flickers out of his hands. He doesn't waste time trying to find where she's gone, and turns back to Luke, accepts the weight of his shell-shocked stare, and reminds him, "Nell." 

They're barely out of the room when he sees her on the wrong side of the balcony and understands. She and the Bent Neck Lady are one and the same and Steven knows that he can't let it happen. He doesn't know if it's smart or if it's safe or if him saving her will only break everything else around them, but he knows this: 

Steve has broken everything he'd ever tried to fix.

So why stop now?

He lunges for his mother, grabbing her outstretched hand and  _pulling_ , as Luke springs for Nellie. Mom screams, in grief and rage, but Luke is keeping Nell from falling off the balcony and it couldn't matter less. 

It was easy for him to be small in front of his mom before, but he doesn't let the house push him into doing it now. He uses every inch of the height he has on her to keep her from getting close as Luke struggles to get Nell back over the railing. 

For a moment, the house groans ominously, and Steve is terrified that the railing will give way and send them both hurtling down towards the floor, but it doesn't. It holds, and Luke pulls Nell back onto solid ground and Steve allows himself a second of relief before turning his attention back onto their mom. 

"You said I could protect them," he tells her. "You're not going to stop me now." 

He pushes her into the Red Room, knows it won't keep her forever but hopes it will work for now. If he was like his father, he would stay there with her, keeping the door shut from the inside and making sure nothing else got out, or in. 

But Steven is not like his father and never really has been. 

He leaves the room, pulling the door shut behind him (too little too late) and goes to find the twins, to get them out before the house recollects and tries again. 

"We can't leave you," Nellie cries, voice shaking desperate with the adrenaline of a rope necklace and the threat of a gentle push. 

"You have to," he tells her, firm as he herds them carefully down the steps. 

"Leigh misses you." 

His face crumples, but he doesn't waver. "Tell her it's not her fault." 

"Then why did you do it?" 

"I don't think I did." 

They're almost through the front doors when the house  _screams_ , rage and grief and terror enough to make him stumble, but not enough to keep him from pushing them out the front door. 

"Steve?" Shirley sounds terrified, and it would be so,  _so_ easy to let himself get distracted. To forget about the threat of the house and go to see her and apologize and explain that it's not their fault. 

He plants himself in the doorway, arms braced against the sides of the frame. "Go," he says, voice firm but devoid of anger, because he isn't angry, not at all. The only thing on his mind is protecting them and maintaining the unwavering faith that this time he  _will_ get it right. 

His dad is the first to move, grabbing Shirley and Luke, who is still clinging to Nell, and yelling for Theo as he pulls them back towards the driveway. He siblings stumble, their feet trying to stay firm in the dirt, their eyes still fixed on him. 

"Go," he repeats, and then he smiles. Smiles like everything is okay, and to him it  _is_. They are leaving, safe and whole, and what could be better than that? "I love you." 

* * *

Nell knows what she saw, knows what they all saw. She might have still been caught in the terrifying confusion of the rope around her neck and the implication of her mother's hand against her shoulder, but she still knows what happened. 

She knows that they all saw Steve, she  _knows_ , but she doesn't know why no one else will talk about it. 

"He saved us," Luke says, strong and certain, because she can't be right now. 

"We have to get him out," she says, an argument they've had over and over. She already knows that they can't, already knows that going there had been a mistake, and knows that going back wouldn't be good for  _anyone_ , but she can't help but  _wish_. 

Wish that someone had noticed. Wish that she had been able to apologize properly. Wish that she had gone to the house herself (like she'd been thinking about for  _weeks_ ), gotten there in time to stop everything before any of it could happen. 

(Wishes that maybe it had been her, but she doesn't say that out loud, never, not once.) 

"He came before," Luke says, like he has already, like maybe if they keep  _saying_ it eventually Steve will hear and come. "I don't think he's stuck." 

But their quiet shared glance says what neither of them are brave enough to speak aloud. 

That maybe they're the reason he  _can't_ anymore. 

(Luke and Nell were never the troublemakers in the house, but they were still kids once, and Steve was there more than once, standing determinedly in the face of an angry adult, ready to take the blame and punishment if he thought he needed to.) 

(She thinks of his torn open wrists and quiet "I don't think I did", and wonders if he hadn't  _been_ doing it, still.) 

* * *

Steve knows that they won't give it up. 

He can tell, from the quiet tugs on the ties in the back of his mind and the shared sense of disbelief and false calm, that they're probably going to wind up doing something  _else_ stupid if he keeps putting this off. 

But he can't quite manage to make himself do it. 

Time passes, and his mother is furious and so is the house. She has moments where she almost seems to forget, but never for long. He'd messed things up, he knows, but she had promised, and he was going to hold her to it, whether she wanted him to or not. 

It's part of being an older brother. 

But so is facing your younger siblings. 

Time passes, but he doesn't know how much. He tells himself he's waiting for  _something_ but can never figure out what it is. Whether it's for his own courage to reemerge out of nowhere or for them to somehow forget about him and the house entirely, he doesn't know. But when he gets that soothing sort of calm that  _knows_ that they're all together again, he knows that he can't put it off any longer. 

He doesn't think he can do this more than once. 

His wrists hurt so badly sometimes that he can barely think through the pain. He wonders if that isn't by design. 

He wonders, sometimes, how much time he has left before he winds up like his mom once and for all. 

Steve knows he can't just wait around until that happens, until it's too late, so when he feels that they're all together again (after who knows how long) he takes an unnecessary deep breath, braces himself, and  _turns_. 

They stare at him with equal parts terrified and awestruck expressions, and Steve can't help but smile because he is just so happy to see them all. To know that they are safe and together and healing and  _whole_. 

Steve watches Theo drop her glass and Shirley's eyes fill with tears as Nell and Luke's faces light up with twin smiles, and he knows that he wouldn't change anything that happened that first night back, if it meant that they stayed that way.

It was, unquestionably, entirely worth it. 

He was, finally, worth _something_. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still neck deep in another work for this heartbreaking little series, but I stopped to write this. what's writing for, if not to make yourself saf every once in a while?
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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